


The World’s Worst Autobiography by the World’s Maybe 70th Best Tinker (If you’re being generous)

by Darkdragonforge



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Gold Morning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:35:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22819360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkdragonforge/pseuds/Darkdragonforge
Summary: A mediocre tinker writes an autobiography. Canon compliant.
Kudos: 5





	1. Chapter 1

“My fingers frantically clattered over the keyboard in front of me, in much the same way a very small animal runs from a lion. Quickly, that is. “

Fuck, is that really the best I could come up with? Christ, what a way to start my sordid and totally villainous autobiography.

Fuck that. I’m not going to do that shit. I’m just going to type what I’m thinking instead of trying to put it in some pretentious ass, flowery language. I should just start.

I’m not going to give you my real name, because that would be fucking dumb, and not really what you wanted to come here for anyways. You want to hear about me, the coolest tinker ever. That is except for Dragon, Hero, or String Theory. Oh yeah, and Professor Haywire. Or Toybox. Or-

You know what actually, scratch that last part. You’re here to read all about little ol’ me, so prepare to bask in my mediocrity! 

My name is Epeios (though I’ve had other aliases too) and I’m a software tinker. To be clear, not software as in gross fleshy “soft” parts, no I mean like computers. I got my start in 2003, which means I’m one of the capes who can say they’ve been active for more than a decade. That’s still impressive, right? Maybe not. Anyways.

Funnily enough, I started off a white hat. I never did anything dumb like join the Wards, but I didn’t do anything illegal at all. A regular paragon of virtue, was I.

I spent my first three years or so writing web crawlers to spot and report gross shit like snuff or kiddie porn (I still have those running by the way) but even optimizing those got boring eventually.

I thought that maybe I could, or should do something more advanced to really flex and strain my tinkering skills, but my power wasn’t cooperative. I wanted to try doing something that I can now in retrospect say was fucking stupid.

I wanted to create a bonafide, genuine, actual, other synonym artificial intelligence. I don’t know what I was gonna use it for though. A crime blotter? A web crawler that makes snarky comments when it reports websites to the feds?

It didn’t really matter I guess, it was a way to really test my limits. Anyways, I figured since people could already make bots, that this would be a snap to do once I figured out the trick to it. My power disagreed.

See, I don’t know or really care if powers are actually sentient or whatever, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t convince it to make an AI. The closest I came was a chatbot that talked back, but after a few triumphant months I realised it was just snatching comments from PHO and mashing them together into something vaguely coherent.

And before you ask, no, this isn’t what this autobiography is, but if it turns out shitty then yes, this is exactly what it is. Totally an experiment, I promise.

I know tinkers have limits, but AI is totally attainable through coding, right? Maybe AI is my analogue of a Manton limit? Like how no matter how hard some Shaker tries they can’t summon fire in someone’s lungs or something. Except for those people who can that is.

I mentioned earlier how I couldn’t “convince my power” to make an AI, and I know that might be confusing.

“Convince it? It’s your power, right?” you might say. It is my power, but let me tell you, Tinkering is fucking weird. It’s not what I thought Tinker powers were like, and I’m sure it’s not what ever you readers think it’s like either.

First things first, my code doesn’t make sense. Not just to people besides me, it doesn’t make sense to me either! I don’t even know how to fucking code either! All I know is that I’ll sit in front of my computer, mind full of ideas, kind of space out, and wake up in front of gibberish.

After about a year of tinkering I decided to look into a programming course near me, and Christ almighty. Like, that shit is gibberish, but not as gibbery as my shit.

My code will be the most confusing shit ever. Why are there strings of thousands of numbers in my code? I don’t know. Why are lines of code separated by an ellipsis here and then an ampersand there ? I don’t know. Why do some lines of code have random Latin just thrown in there? Nescio.

It’s honestly miserable, but I’m getting off course. Right, how did I turn from white hat to black hat? Well, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t. Gasp, what a twist, right? I mentioned earlier I had multiple aliases, and I still do now.

So what did change? I got bored tinkering up the same thing over and over, so I opened a thread on PHO to see if anyone had requests for something for me to slap together for them. Some of those were fun, some weren’t. I remember being kind of honored when Toybox ripped the code for my encryption program and threw it onto their site. One of the requests was really fun though, and It was the first time I really made anything that closely resembled a virus.

Lydda303 wanted something to rip into an email account he lost the password to, and after checking to make sure he wasn’t trying to perv on someone or something, I made it for him.

It was super simple, barely better than just something that could bruteforce the password, but it worked, and it worked well.

That’s what made me think of what I could really do, and honestly, even if Lydda had been a creep who happened to be really good at lying then I’m still glad I tried doing what he wanted, because without it I’m not sure if I’d have done a sliver of what I’ve done now.

I mean, not to brag (yes to brag) but I’ve done work with the Undersiders. Yeah, those Undersiders.

Anyways, I think that’s enough for today, I’ll make a second post tomorrow. Talk to you guys later.

-E. 6/19/2013


	2. Chapter 2

I don’t know what’s going on right now. It’s not an Endbringer attack, I don’t think, since Endbringer attacks don’t usually end with the fucking internet down. At least not for me, that is. I can usually find some little corner of the web I can lurk in. Maybe Ziz ripped down my satellites or something. Who fucking knows? Not me, especially since I can’t exactly check the news.

Whatever it is though, it’s fucking spooky, and so I’m hunkered down in the bunker Toybox sent me as an apology for ripping my code. I just hope the pocket dimension doesn’t collapse on top of me, especially since it’s nearly six years old.

My day started normal, it really did. I woke up and read the logs from some of my PRT probes while eating a bagel and sipping on a glass of orange juice. I didn’t even have time to stroke my white cat or twirl my mustache before my internet went out.

My internet. The internet I’m connected to through a satellite array above Boston. That was all the warning I needed before deciding to hide in here. So here I am, typing away. It’s not a terrible place to be, honestly. I’ve got my computers, canned food, distilled water and all the time I want.

Where did I leave off with that last post? Right, with Lydda. After I sent him the email thing, we exchanged PM’s for a few weeks. Lydda seemed very interested in my programs, especially my chat bot.

In fact, after finding out about the chat bot, that was all he asked me about! Question after inane question! One day I just ended up saying “fuck it” and I blocked him.

A powerful tool, the block is, as I never heard from him again. Now, to transition to a different, much more interesting topic, I want to talk about my very first proper virus.

The program was tiny, and had only one task, which was to infiltrate a device and slow it down as much as possible. It worked perfectly on its first test, rendering my test computer, which was a hand-me-down tower running XP, inoperable while active. I ended up naming it Pebble, and I still use a version of it today.

If anyone ever reads this, and you happen to be a PHO veteran, then you might have heard of Pebble before, as it was what I used to demolish the (formerly) popular Slaughterhouse 9 fansite, 2the9s.com.

You see what I did was swipe the login for the site’s owner, Meterman, and then I dropped an announcement post with an attached link for what I said was a video of a Crawler sighting at a gas station.

It wasn’t, obviously. It was an edited version of a much older video, which was mentioned almost instantly by a lot of the super fans in the comments. I was almost impressed honestly, at how easily they could identify the footage, but it didn’t matter, because my job was already done.

An hour after the link was clicked on, Pebble started working, and in that hour I used more stolen accounts to post as many booby-trapped links as I could. After its initial work was done, Pebble self-terminated, but the effects it produced remained.

According to my count, I had gotten more than 4,000 people to click on one of my links, which shut down a little under half of the site’s user base.

Another note about that incident is that it was the first time I used the name Epeios, which of my monikers is probably both my favorite, and my most pretentious.

I wanted my next project after Pebble to be more ambitious, but unlike my attempts at an AI, this overly complex creation went well. Its goal was fairly simple in concept; It was a contagious program, spreading through emails, that would allow me to take remote control over a computer that had been infected.

I was originally planning for all of the emails from an infected computer to spread the virus, but decided that that would make it way too fucking obvious that something was spreading, so I made sure that the program would randomly attach itself to one of the next 100 emails sent from the account.

My reasoning was that fewer connected computers made for a lower chance of someone recognizing what it was, following the chain and destroying it.

The first few versions were full of problems. They would either be way too easy to spot, sometimes showing an attached file to the email, wouldn’t spread properly, or would just inexplicably break for no discernable reason, but a few months of frustrated working later and the uncreatively titled Tunnel was complete.

It got as far as 206 devices before it abruptly stopped. I followed the trail and found my roadblock. A throwaway email, one used to only receive emails for things such as signing up for an account. This left me with a predicament.

To maximise stealth, I didn’t want a massive branching network, even if it would give me more to work with. No, I wanted to throw out multiple single chains of computers, so that if one chain was caught, I could simply discard it and use a different chain. However, a branching path would make for a chain that was less likely to fail because of a single road block.

Suddenly, I had an idea. What if I simply made it so the chain could diverge if the newest person in the chain didn’t perpetuate it? Well, I tried it out, and it worked very well. It spread between thousands of accounts within only a week. Marvelling at my own success, I renamed Tunnel to Hydra, and eagerly began to implement it’s basic idea into all future projects of mine.

While it didn’t really work with something like Pebble, it worked well in other fields, such as my primary info collectors — my Bookworms. When one of my Bookworms is sent on a task to collect a juicy file, if it meets something it can’t pass through, it will automatically go back and find a different place to attack from. So, say you’re trying to dig through something that's well protected like a PRT headquarter’s files, my bookworms will almost instantly find the path of least resistance.

Woah. That was a lot. Sorry if you found that boring, I guess. There's a lot more to my tech I didn’t get into though, but I think that’s equal parts because I don’t really understand what’s going on, and that I don’t want to give up all my secrets just yet. I mean, it’s not like I’m going to retire or something.

Why am I writing this? An autobiography? Christ, this really must be a shitty read, though I’m starting to think I won’t publish this one. “Why are you writing it then?” I guess I must just love screaming into the void.

That’s all for now. I’m going to take a nap and then pop out of here, I guess, to see if the internet is back.

Bye.

-E. 6/20/2013


	3. Chapter 3

What the fuck. What the fuck. I wasn’t going to write another one today, but holy shit! 

It's like I walked into fucking hell! The sky is black. Like, pitch fucking black. I’m sitting at my kitchen counter right now, staring out the window. I think I’m fairly far away from whatever turned the fucking sun off.

Turns out, buying a shitty house way in the fucking boonies means that whenever whatever the fuck happened happens, your house isn’t turned into ash. That’s probably what it is, isn't it? Ash that is, the sky’s probably full of ash. I’ll grab my mask.

Right, back to this; what the fuck did this? I still don’t have an internet connection, so I can’t really find out. At least my house has a big ass generator in the basement, so I won’t be losing any power for a while. 

I guess I could try driving to Springfield or Boston, but I don’t think that would accomplish much other then seeing if one of the cities survived whatever the fuck happened. Did we get nuked? Did some tinkertech go haywire? Did a volcano erupt? What the fuck happened! I don’t know. Who knows? Someone, probably.

And here's another thing; right now I’m spooked, I think it’d be hard not to be, but I can’t help but feel some amount of dread, like this is a prelude or something.

I’m going to head out of state, see if I can drive past the ash. I’ll add to this later, sooner if I can find a signal while driving.  
-E. 6/20/2013

I’m in a Denny’s right now, and oh my god. What the fuck. What the fuck. Scion went villain? Fucking Scion? How didn’t I die?

I don’t know what to say, I don’t know what to do. The portal’s at my house, and what’s stopping that golden fuckholster from looping back around to vaporise what's left of the east coast? I should keep going. I have a bunker set up in Arizona. Maybe I can just hide in there and wait to see if this blows over. Hey, maybe I can make it there before he decides to do some shit like blast the border next.

Is he following some sort of path? There has to be a path he’s following, right? I need to look at the Scion tracker site, see if I can find some pattern he’s following. I’ll throw some data-crunchers on that right now. Oh yeah, data-crunchers. There's an interesting story behind those, but now’s not really the time. I’ll add some more onto this doc if I can find a pattern.

-E. 6/21/2013

It’s the 22nd now and I think I’ve cracked it. I’m almost certain he’s just reversing what he’s done to help people.

The Scion tracker site went dark about an hour ago, but I’ve managed to stitch together enough of those dumb fucking “Scion saved my cat!” stories with the well documented cases of Scion helping against stuff like Endbringers and natural disasters to make something resembling a timeline.

Comparing it to the currently ongoing, very well documented path of destruction in his wake, it seems to line up almost perfectly with what he’s done to help, just in reverse order. Their have been a few deviations so far but not enough that I think it invalidates the pattern.

Assuming he doesn’t deviate too far from retracing steps, he won’t show up in Arizona for at least another two days, which hopefully should be enough time for the PRT or someone to beat him up enough for him to retreat or something. You know, like an Endbringer. 

He will retreat eventually, I hope. I don’t care how high you rolled in the power lotto, when the entire global cape network is trying to grind you up, something’s going to work, right? That’s the idea behind the Endbringer fights at least, isn’t it? I don’t know, honestly. I’ve never been in one. What would I do exactly anyways? Fucking hack Ziz? 

I forwarded my timeline to the PRT and made a public post on PHO about it. I pinned the post to the home page, so if anyone manages to get on PHO, they should see it.

It’s… weird seeing other people in public right now. Nearly everyone is mourning someone. I know a lot of my own family probably died, but I’m managing not to think about it too much. Or at least I was. God fucking dammit. 

-E. 6/22/2013

I’m better now. Better. Yeah. 

It’s the 23rd now. Nothing is getting better. I think the PRT is planning something super delicate, because their databases are nigh impregnable now. PHO went down yesterday, which kind of makes my post even more useless than it already was. God, I hope someone saw it, it would’ve been such a waste of time if only I saw it.

In other news, I got to my bunker, and I even have internet down here. I’m glad crime pays, because I wouldn’t have this place if it didn’t. 

This is where my big gun is. My magnum opus, I suppose. I call it Babel, and it’s housed in one machine only.

Babel really is my fucking masterpiece. It’s something similar to my Bookworms and Hydras, but it’s built to go from computer to computer with the only vector for infection being going to the same website, sucking up and copying data as it spreads. Babel will be released in about three hours, I need to make sure it’s in perfect condition. 

The way I see it, it’s now or never. Scion will be dropping by Arizona for his first visit of three predicted stops here at about 2:30 pm tomorrow.

I think I’m going to die in here. I don’t think we can really stop Scion at this point, and I certainly don’t think a few dozen feet of lead and concrete will stop whatever he’s using to fry us from getting to me.

If we die, I want to make sure Bet’s history doesn’t die with us. That's why I’m deploying Babel. Babel is going to soak up all of our knowledge and then spread it across every computer it can connect with. Hopefully that makes rebuilding easier for any of us that survives, or maybe it’ll just act as an interesting footnote if some aliens come knocking or something. 

To move on to something else here, I am almost certain I’m going to die. I’m not a combative cape, I’m a goddamn computer virus tinker. If anything stronger then a toddler climbs down here (or, more likely in Scion’s case, blasts through a hundred feet of fucking concrete) I’m going to die.

It’s not really a question, I don’t think. If something gets down here, I’m dead. If anyone is reading this, my name is Epeios, and I’m probably one of the most mediocre people alive. 

I’m going to bed. Goodnight. I’ll type something if I wake up tomorrow. 

-E. 6/23/2013


	4. Chapter 4

He passed me, or he deviated from the path. Those are the options. I’m alive right now, which is great, but I’m afraid to go outside. It feels like testing fate.

Babel deployed as expected, but didn’t manage to grab as much as I expected it to. I’m guessing a lot of people aren’t online, which in retrospect makes sense.

It got chunks of PHO and wikipedia, as well as little snippets of thousands of other sites. I’ll be sending it out again later today, hopefully it’ll be able to find something it previously missed.

I don’t think I’ll ever post this, but if I do, I should make it a bit more like a proper biography. I mentioned earlier that I think giving my real name would be stupid, and I still think it would be.

So instead, I’m going to employ what I like calling “The Protectorate Strategy.”

“What is the Protectorate Strategy?” I can hear you ask. Well thankfully, it’s easy to summarize. I’m going to construct a better than possible truth out of a small, hidden kernel of truth so I can push my secret agenda of hugging puppies and kissing babies.

I‘m kidding, really, I am. I’m just going to be incredibly vague.

I was born in Bumfuck-nowhere Arizona, though most of my family lives in and around Boston. I also have a lot of relatives in Illinois and Michigan, if anybody cares.

I’m one of four kids, and had what I think is a fairly happy childhood. My Mom and Dad split when I was five. They’re not divorced, but figured out they couldn’t live together, so they didn’t. We never had much money, but we could pay bills, put food on the table, and pay the occasional medical bill.

Well, occasional isn’t quite right. My mom was never healthy, and was in and out of the hospital a lot. We managed though, it was fine.

When I was 16, stuff really started to change. My paternal grandfather died, and it really fucked up my dad. The same year, my paternal grandmother got diagnosed with early onset dementia, and my dad moved back to Illinois to take care of her.

Without going into detail, this was also the year I triggered. The two events aren’t directly connected but… I really don’t want to dig into it.

I started tinkering properly in my junior year of high school, graduated early and then moved out of my mom’s house when I was 17.

Thankfully, I could function alright on my own. Tinkering income was low, but steady, and I could find a small place to rent. After I turned from white hat, the money got a lot better, and I was shuffling money around enough that I could buy a fair bit of property without getting caught.

After that I hired some contractors and carpenters to work on the bunker I’m in right now, as well as the cabin up north. The bulk of this bunker is built by Sigma Engineering, which if you didn’t know, is not only the company responsible for Endbringer shelters in the Southwest, but is also a shell company for the Elite. Small world, huh?

Anyways, after that, all of my deeds are well documented, and my life was pretty monotonous. Monotonous, but enjoyable, if that makes sense. Is that contradictory? An enjoyable but monotonous existence? I don’t think so.

What should I talk about now? Current events maybe. Today is the 24th, and the internet is still mostly down, and I don't think it’s going to get any better. Like I mentioned earlier, Scion passed me by, or completely broke from his pattern. I don’t know which is worse.

I’m scared to go up. What if Scion passes by now? To make up for lost time? I would die, and I really don’t want to. In movies people would usually say some corny shit like “I’ve come to peace with my eventual demise.” Bull. Shit.

I’m 26 years old. I’ve never dated, never been skydiving, never ate at a fancy restaurant. I’m not ready to die, there's still so much I haven’t done that I want to. If I by some miracle make it through this, I’ll do it all. All of it.

I promise.

-E 6/24/2013

It’s the 26th. Not much has changed. The pattern says that today would have been Scion’s second pass by Arizona, and I think he’s a no-show. I don’t know how I should feel.

Did the Protectorate do it? Was he repelled? I don’t know, and I don’t want to find out if I’m wrong.

The internet is officially dead. Babel can’t go anywhere anymore, and here I am, alone. I’m scared. Really scared. I miss my house. I miss shitposting on my PHO alts. I miss talking to my friends. Is Smiley still alive? GrimTidings? Bag? Ted?

I hope they made it out okay. They’re good friends, even though I wasn’t the best friend. That’s another thing I’ll do if I survive. I’ll be better at the whole… friend thing (Is that socializing, or is socializing more broad of a term? More narrow? Who knows. Probably someone smarter than me.)

Yeah. I’ll be better around people. I promise. Who am I promising? Whoever finds this I guess. It doesn’t matter.

I’m going to go eat. Get some water too. And then I’ll probably sleep. Talk about monotony.

-E 6/26/2013

I blink slowly and then adjust my glasses. I hurriedly turn my mouse’s cursor to the bright blue Save as file button and click on it, wait a second to make sure it saved, and then close the tab.

I puff out a breath I didn’t realise I was holding. Good fucking lord I hate this. I look at my computer’s clock to inspect the time. It’s barely past midnight, making this technically the 27th. A week or so ago I would have called this early, but right now I feel exhausted.

I stand up from my swivel chair and stretch out my arm for a long moment. I relish the satisfying sensation that accompanies the sounds of quiet popping.

I stretch out my right, and then left leg, before stomping to the cupboard full of food. I have a decent variety of food, all either dried or canned of course. I pick out some dried macaroni, as well as some canned tomato sauce, before walking to the small kitchen. Is this what people mean when they say kitchenette, or is a kitchenette something more specific? I shrug my shoulders, though I’m not sure why, it’s not like I’m in here with anyone.

After setting the sauce and pasta on the stove to boil, I turn around and sit down on my air mattress.

I try to focus on the faint sound of bubbling water, but it’s difficult. I wish I had thought of storing some music here, it’s so quiet. I could play some music that Babel scraped, but I don’t really feel like being on my computer right now.

I shake my head and turn my attention back to the boiling water. I check the digital clock on the counter. It’s 12:47, the pasta’s probably way overcooked.

I look at the stove for a second. Little bits of tomato sauce have bubbled off from the pot and painted the cheap white metal with little red dots.

I turn both burners off and carefully pick up the pot of macaroni, and slowly tread to the sink, leaning the pot against the side of the basin so that water can trickle out, but the pasta won’t follow. I should have had a strainer in here.

A few stray noodles fall anyways, and I put down the pot on the counter before reaching into the sink to pluck them up. I pop them into my mouth. Yes, they’re fucking overcooked. I think I would sigh, if it wasn’t for the mushy noodles in my mouth. I go back to the stove to retrieve the little saucepan, and when I do I pour it’s contents into the pot of noodles.

I eat very slowly, trying to savor the exceedingly shitty meal I’ve made. The sauce is cheap and from a can, without any of the flavor even cheap spices from Walmart would bring. The noodles are limp and too squishy.

I finish my meal and look at the clock again. 1:47.

I stretch again, splaying out my arms upwards, and then return them to my side.

But they don’t move.

Then I see it. In the very corner of my vision. I catch a glimpse of a thin gold rimmed polygonal shape. I try to twist my neck to look and I can’t.

I feel the warmth of afternoon sunlight on my face.

I try to scream, but I can’t.


	5. Chapter 5

It's been awhile since I’ve been in front of a proper computer, way longer than I thought it would be. Right, where to start. The end of the world is a good start, yeah?

I guess I was snatched near the end of what is now being called Gold Morning. Real creative name, yeah. Fitting though, not gonna lie. Definitely sounds like something you would find in a textbook.

Surprisingly enough, good things have come from the literal end of the world. I think I’m just...doing better in general? I guess that's what splurging on a therapist gets you, even if I can only see him once every two months if I’m lucky.

I wouldn’t want that job. The apocalypse happened, and I’m sure they were overworked before, but now? Jesus. Especially since there's not really any new influx of therapists, seeing as there's a grand total of what, two colleges?

Hmm, what else. Oh, yeah! There's no longer a bounty for my capture, though from what I’ve gleaned crawling through old PRT files, it was lower than fucking Curler’s. You know, the dude who’s power is fucking telekinetic knot tying.

Humiliating. Fucking Curler.

I wasn’t that small time, was I? I hacked the PRT! What did Curler do again? Trip people? Jesus. Why am I thinking about this again?

I guess this is as good a segue I’ll get, but all of those bounties are gone. Everyone gets a second chance. Even the most evil of evils, like Curler.

If motherfucking Jack Slash just strolled into the City, he could show up to the Warden HQ and say “I’m here to sign the sheet to register as a hero.” and they would happily throw him a tree’s worth of paperwork.

I’m exaggerating obviously, but it’s kind of nuts, isn’t it? People like Teacher and Marquis are just out and about, kicking puppies or whatever they do for fun.

I should talk about something not cape related. What have I done recently? Oh, I finally went on my first date! It went well for the most part, but then the topic of capes came up, and he went to the restroom and didn’t come back.

Hey, at least he ordered something pretty tasty. Took it home and had it for dinner the next day. Microwaved alfredo is still pretty fucking good.

What else? I haven’t gone sky-diving, but the restaurant the date was at was pretty fancy. Different forks and spoons and all that.

I got a hobby that doesn’t even tertiarily involve a computer. I’m learning to crochet! I am so far mediocre, but I have managed to put together a truly magnificent pot holder.

I reached out to my family, or at least tried to. I think my older sister hates my guts. Blames capes for the whole...y’know, world ending, so I’ve left her alone.

My Dad, er, joined the Fallen? Which is a whole can of worms I don’t want to open. As for the rest? They either aren’t on Gimel, have been ignoring my letters and posts online, or are...not with us anymore.

On a semi related note, I’ve been doing my caping white-hatting again! Or well, mostly white-hatting. I’m not doing anything illegal, but if anyone comes to me with a simple enough job and good pay, I’ll probably do it.

Anyways. White hatting, yeah. I mean, I was shitting on the Wardens earlier, but I do appreciate doing things that have a tangible positive effect, ya know? Babel felt good, right, and not only because it was something entirely helpful.

I think I’ve been tinkering wrong my entire career. I've noticed that I always seem to do better with bigger scale projects, and I think that might be key. My Hydra code base was a step in the right direction, but I think that was all it was; a step.

Escalation is the big thing I think. I need to go bigger and badder. More branches in the tree, more heads on the dragon. Just more.

Speaking of Dragon, I got to meet her! Very briefly, but I did! Holy shit. She's very, er, professional? I’m not the greatest with people, but I could pretty easily tell she doesn’t like me. At all.

That's fair though, I was mostly a pest. I think the only real interaction I had with her was when the Undersiders— Oh god, the Undersiders.

I swear, one of these days I’m going to turn a corner and bump into goddamn Tattletale and she’ll just fucking stab me, because I know the Undersiders didn’t take their shot at heroism.

Even if they had gone white hat, I'd be more surprised if a meeting with Tattletale didn’t end with me on a stretcher or in a body bag. I can’t really blame her. After all, I did decide to snoop into a Thinker’s files.

Unrelated, but do you know how many pictures of her (former) teammate Skitter she had? Holy shit, had to be at least 4 or 5 hundred. Fucking ridiculous. I don’t even have that many pictures with my family.

Anyways, back on topic. The Wardens, yeah. I’m not sure how stable they really are, but they are able to keep me on payroll, so that's something?

I’m not exactly the best tinker on Gimel. Top 100, 60 maybe if you're feeling generous, but if they can drop money on me, they're either very comfortable or very desperate.

Probably a mix of both, honestly. Still, it’s work, and not in a field I’m used to. I’m basically making spreadsheets, schedules, all that. They’re not...stable? The maintenance on them is...mostly tedium, but thankfully a lot of the management and maintenance on the sheets can be done by the AI adjacent bots I’ve made.

Is AI the right word? Probably not. I guess what I’m working with now are closer to Virtual Intelligences than Artificial ones, though to most that's probably just semantics.

Honestly I don’t really know what to do with myself. I’m enjoying work with the Wardens, but it feels unsubstantially substantial, if that makes sense.

Like, yeah, sure, my unstable patrol charts are the only stopgap between Gimel and oblivion, for sure. I just wish the “tangible help” I was being assigned was more important. It feels almost like busy work, like they’re trying to stop the personification of mediocrity from being a big bad internet villain.

I’m just being bitter. I have a second chance, a new direction in life, yadda yadda. Whatever.  
I’m in a weird spot, all I want to do is cape, all I know how to do is cape, but I can’t fucking cape.

There's not really an internet even more, and even if there was, what would I do? Take down some Fallen sites? A fucking twelve year old could do that. I’m stuck doing internal work, which is mind numbing. At least I’m making progress with the VIs.

And in my personal life. Look, as angry as I am about being the Warden’s shitty IT guy, I’ve got to admit I’m happy. It’s weird to say, but I think I am. I’m happy.

I think. Isn’t happiness one of those things you're supposed to only know in retrospect? Am I content? Pleased with my life?

Semantics aside, this is pretty much it. I could try and bookend it with something pretentious, but I’m too lazy. Bye.

-E. 7/01/2015


End file.
